Election fever is gaining momentum. Traveling around Jakarta one can easily notice pamphlets hanging on every city corner with photos of political party candidates for the 2009 general elections.

Most of the pictures are of little-known personalities, as in the past they have not done much for their electoral districts either as individuals or as party leaders. Therefore their commitment to the good cause of the people is doubted. But that is the way political parties in this country operate.

Recruitment of the political parties' candidates for the 2009 general elections are questioned not only by people at large, but even among members of the political parties themselves. A decision to place one candidate in a certain constituency is not strictly defined by a specific standard.

National parliament candidates for one large party in West Sumatra are people who have spent most of their entire careers in Jakarta. Party leaders in West Sumatra who have devoted their energy and money to party building have to be satisfied with their placement in an unlikely winning position on the list.

Members of national parliament who represent Jakarta only communicate to his or her constituents through pamphlets, and only a few do so on a regular basis. Personal communication with his or her constituents in gatherings and listening to the peoples' grievances in their constituencies is hardly practiced. One may say that one reason for this is because the electoral districts have undefined boundaries.

It may be true. Five electoral districts are represented by 75 members of the Jakarta City Council, meaning each district is represented by fifteen members. The areas each of them represent are unclear. The concept of a district office which is an integral part of U.S political representation is not known here. One can only assume that each of them represents nobody but themselves.

A compelling reason that legislative members do not build ties with his or her electoral district is that it is not politically rewarding. Whatever attempts he or she has made to build ties with his or her electoral districts does not influence the decisions made by party leaders. Party leaders will decide what electoral district and at what number he or she will be placed.

Loyalty to the party which translates into loyalty to the party leaders is the yardstick used by political parties to determine their candidates' future political careers. Unless a candidate is extremely rich, a relative of the top party leadership or comes from an influential family, a secure future is not guaranteed. Rebelliousness is intolerable.

People doubt the commitment of a political party to represent their interests. Allegations that 51 members of national parliament were involved in bribery cases across all political party affiliations and corruption charges against hundreds of local representative council members continues unabated since the introduction of regional autonomy in 1999. This convinces people that putting their trust in political parties may be wrong.

People will not go to political party offices to express their grievances. One reason is because it is useless to go there as people may not meet any party leaders. The office is generally quiet and unattended. But the more important reason is that people do not believe the parties can help them find solutions to their problems.

Taking all these factors into account, democracy for the majority of Indonesians is still far from meaningful. Indonesia successfully conducted national, provincial and district legislative elections in 1999 and 2004 as well as a direct presidential election for the first time in 2004. The country began holding direct elections for provincial governors and local chief executives for the first time in 2005. All these elections were conducted relatively free from serious electoral violence and intimidation.

However, the electoral processes have so far failed to bridge the widening gap between political elites and the general public. Work still needs to be done to ensure the system can provide strong links between elected representatives/leaders and ordinary citizens.

Lack of trust in the electoral process bringing long-term benefits to the voter can have adverse impacts. Instead of receiving empty promises from politicians, people start demanding cash benefits. Campaign mobilization will be determined not by the number of people who believe a candidate will do something good once she or he is elected, but because participants are paid.

The more the candidates can afford to pay, the larger the number of participants. Whether the paid participants will vote for those who pay them is a different story. Low voter turnout during the local direct elections should be an early warning signal about the degree of trust in the electoral process. Democracy has becomes a costly business in Indonesia.

The political system has to be reformed. A certain degree of parallelism between the billions of rupiah spent in organizing elections and the process of building functioning representation between representatives and ordinary citizens has to be established.

Cecep Effendi is Senior National Advisor German Technical Cooperation for Advisory Service Support for Decentralization (GTZ-ASSD), Home Ministry Jakarta. It is his personal opinion. He can be reached at cecep.effendi@gtz.de

Djan Faridz is candidate for Regional Representative Assembly (DPD) from Jakarta Electoral District. He can be reached at tb_robby@yahoo.com.

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